would shew, is that such was the received usage of the word "seal" in the time of St. Paul; but no one, admitting this, will readily suppose, that St. Paul would have used the term with regard to Christians, unless he had meant it to be understood of the Sacrament of Baptism. The Fathers, moreover, uniformly speak of Baptism as sealing, and so keeping, guarding us, as it were a seal placed upon us[1], &c.; moderns call it a seal, ratification, or outward mark, of God's covenant. The two metaphors are essentially distinct; our modern usage is borrowed from St. Paul's description of the older covenant, whereof circumcision was the seal, but was no sacrament; that of the Fathers agrees with this reference to Baptism, which, being a Sacrament, seals, guards, preserves us[2], as well as guarantees the promises of God towards us.
It would appear then, that the interpretation which perhaps most among us would in the first instance have looked upon as cold and formal, is, I might say, certainly true: and if so, it may well be a warning how we hold any thing, which ties us down to Christ's sacraments, to be cold or formal; for in this case it will be God's Holy Spirit which we have ignorantly suspected of teaching coldly and lifelessly. Not as though we supposed that the Apostle here speaks of a sealing, which having taken place once for all, it then remained, as it were on a lifeless mass of goods, or would keep us safe without any effort, self-denial, or prayer; but rather, that as a living seal stamped upon our souls by the Spirit of life, and bearing with
- ↑ Bellarmine (de Sacram. L. i. c. 17.) remarking, that Scripture saith, Abraham "received the sign (σημεῖον) of circumcision, the seal (σφραγῖδα) of the faith which he had," &c., infers that circumcision was a sign to the Jews, a seal to Abraham only: he remarks, also, that, often as St Paul speaks of circumcision, he does not, even when directly speaking of its benefits to the Jews (Rom. iii.), mention its being a seal of faith. J. Gerhard (de Sacram. 387.), contends, in answer, that there is no difference between sign and seal. But the difference remains between Abraham's case and that of any Jew, that to Abraham circumcision was a seal of God's approval of his previous faith, to his descendants it was a sign only of their being taken into the covenant, in which a like faith was to be exercised.
- ↑ See Note (E), at the end.
